Accursed

From this morning's news, President Trump deplores
how hard the EU is being with the UK. But then, Commission
President Juncker said it early on: the EU is not a Golf Club!
Indeed not, it is a series of diplomatic treaties. and that
'accursed' departure deal Mrs May negotiated is in fact
a reading of what is in those agreements. The stumbling
block now is how to disengage from a half-century of common
practices.

The urgency behind Bexit appears two-fold: Greener pastures
for the UK, certainly an agile trading agent; more integration and
harmonization for the other partners, who desire it, for example on
minimum wage practices. I have never liked the term BREXIT, linked
in my mind to the GREXITdrama, when Greece came close to being
kicked out of the Euro because of inadequate financial controls.
The UK is in the opposite situation: prosporous outside the Euro and
on top of its policies. BREXIT is the view from the point of view of
Europe. Should one speak of BREXODUS?

I think the President of the EU Council, Poland's Donald Tusk was quite wise
to counsel Mrs May not to waste her Brexit extension period.  There is a
emerging view of sectoral trade policies and a limited customs union, much
needed.

Just yesterday Lyse and I went to a Doc Martens boutique in Montreal, a
British shoe-maker with a global presence. But the iconic thick-soled boot
 was invented by a German physician, sold to old ladies and policemen in
England to end popularized by British Punk musicians. So there it is, EUROPE
is EUROPE.